This Mole has been snug in its burrow catching up on episodes of Mad Men and Game of Thrones, so for many months missed the Dapper Laughs phenomenon. Mr Laughs – who is not a Chuckle Brothers tribute act (believe us, you don’t want to make that mistake twice) – is perhaps the biggest British star on Vine, the app where users can create and share six-second clips.
He is “the lovechild of Danny Dyer and a sexist Topman t-shirt“, the anthropomorphisation of every rejected picture caption from Loaded, and a self-professed “lad” whose style is to laugh at, not with, women. He’s a dick joke merchant who says stuff like “show her your penis – if she cries, she’s just playing hard to get“. He had a top 20 single (titled “Proper Moist”, one of his catchphrases), and ITV2 gave him a dating show called On The Pull which was described as “a rapist’s almanac” by Chortle‘s Lee Kern (and later republished at the Huffington Post) – a piece which Mr Laughs addressed during a stand-up gig at the Scala in London last month, where he also told an audience member she was “gagging for a rape”, as new footage shows (skip to 10:25):
It’s really worth writing this down in full, because it’s quite the defence:
Laughs: A lot of people complained about the TV show, they think it’s sexist. At first I thought they were saying I was the sexiest, they’re saying it’s sexist. And then there was this article, I don’t know if you saw it in the Huffington Post, they write these articles and I don’t give a fuck, they write all these articles, they write all these articles about my jokes and I can’t fucking read. Cunts. They wrote this one saying it was like an alamac [sic], like an alamac [sic], well what’s that mean, it’s like a guide, a go-to guide, a rapist’s go-to guide. A rapist’s go-to guide. My ITV show is a rapist’s go-to guide. I filmed six episodes, half hour each episodes, right, if it was a fucking guide to rape I’d have done one five minute episode. I’d have come on and gone ‘wahey, I’m Dapper Laughs, go down the shops, get some rope, bit of duct tape, break the bitch, well done, see you later’.
Audience member: Oi oi!
Laughs: You can’t rape women.
Second audience member: [inaudible]
Laughs: [Laughing] You can’t rape women.
Third audience member: Yes you can!
Laughs: [points at second audience member who shouted] Oi, you’re missing a few front teeth there. Yeah. Rape gone wrong. [Audience laughs] Don’t try and rape… [fourth audience member shouts inaudible comment, Laughs points] She’s gagging for a rape. Yeah, we’ll have a chat after, there’s quite a few… [gestures at audience].
This exchange comes to light after a student at Cardiff University successfully managed to have his scheduled gig at the student union cancelled, and the brouhaha last week as the viral content website UsvsTh3m ran a piece criticising his Christmas album for featuring a song where he tells a homeless person they “stink of shit“. Not great, on an album Mr Laughs had intended to raise money for the housing charity Shelter, who promptly stated that they wouldn’t be accepting any of his money. Mr Laughs also set his many thousands of followers on the young women responsible for calling him out, leading to an all-round PR disaster for ITV2 and what was one of the worst-written “apologies” of all time:
I know that there has been heated commentary on social media in recent days pic.twitter.com/ynqLgp77r8
— Dapper Laughs (@dapperlaughs) November 8, 2014
There is now a petition with more than 45,000 signatures (and climbing) demanding ITV2 not commission a second series of On The Pull. You can find it here.
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